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In Consequences of Pragmatism, Rorty suggests we give up once and for all trying to answer a question that probably has no meaning, and indeed, may never have had any: namely, the question of what philosophy really is, or of who really ought to be considered a philosopher. He thinks the time has come to end the continuing contestations over the territory of ‘philosophy,’ a territory defined academically, in any case, and guarded as such against intrusions from the outside. The only thing that...

In trying to meet the wishes of the editor of the present work I am, obviously, faced with a peculiarly difficult, if not to say insoluble, problem. My participation in a project of this nature has, at first sight, a totally paradoxical aspect in that (1) I can in no sense be considered a representative or influential contemporary French philosopher, (2) I do not claim, and have never claimed, any genuine originality in my manner of treating the questions that have interested me, and (3) what...

The book of André Carus on Carnap, Carnap and Twentieth-Century Thought, begins with a quotation which, as some of you can imagine, was an agreeable surprise for me: Mathematicians, unlike the rest of us, have retained something of the original Enlightenment spirit, thought the novelist Robert Musil; they provide examples of a spiritual daring that has otherwise fallen by the wayside. “We others,” Musil regretted, “have let our courage drop since the time of the Enlightenment. Some small bung...

Advice to writers:The less said, the better.(But this little piece of advice should be heard by philosophers too.) Paul Valéry, “Entre deux mots (maux)” I hope you will kindly forgive me for not choosing, as I might have done, a French philosopher for today’s topic but rather a writer whom we may characterize, according to his own words, as a French antiphilosopher. Among my motives for such a choice is my long-averred fascination with authors such as Paul Valéry and, in a different way, Robe...

Peter Hacker, in Appearance and Reality, says of truth that it generally has the dignity, but not the charm. We are much more easily seduced by the illusions of philosophy than by the humble truths it is able to discover and communicate. That is, it seems, true not only in the case of philosophy, but quite generally. It could be said also of truth that it usually has the respect and the praises, but not the favour and the honours. It is not by truth that we are the most spontaneously attracte...